The Spog Blog

Do you know your Gautami from your Gouda, font from Fontina, or Helvetica from Swiss? Take this (rather long-winded) quiz and find out!

(If you find this amusing, you are probably another turophile typographer like me - I am sure there must be at least one other in the universe. If you don't then you probably have a life - well done!)

I very rarely read papers or pay much attention to the news any more - same old, same old despair-inducing stuff - but something on the six o'clock news on Radio 4 last night had me more than usually enraged and I have to share it. Trying to navigate the BBC website in order to share my reflections takes exasperation to an altogether different level, but I will not dwell on that here.

This is what I wrote:

'I refer to a report yesterday (16 July) on the six o’clock news on the funeral of Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe. He was a first rate fellow doing a difficult job, no doubt, but I inferred from the casual reference to ‘another soldier’ who died with him, that this unnamed soldier’s death was not newsworthy. I can’t imagine how that must have made the parents of 18-year-old Joshua Hammond feel. It made me furious. At the sound of your unctious ‘royal reporter’ giving further sycophantic gravitas to your coverage, I turned the radio off.'

Have I missed anything?

Rather than curling up in a cave and ignoring the world for the last few months, I have been spending my time touting my book on the Harper Collins website 'Authonomy', with some measure of success (as in, people like it), but it is addictive and now I realise there is a whole other world out there with which I should attempt to re-engage.

So - nature notes. The most fantastic blossom and cuddly catkins abound, daffodils and primroses grace grassy banks everywhere and suddenly the countryside is awesome in its promise. Did you know also that moorhens climb trees? We observed one literally run up a weeping willow branch which touched the ground, and there it perched on one of the branches. Delightful little feathered critters with big feet, but not ones you expect to see aloft somehow.

I still drive to work past watercress beds every morning and for the past week, a pair of adult swans have taken up residence. It is a most glorious sight to behold their amazing white plumage and contrasting black legs set against a background of watercress green. A Kodak moment, except I don't own a camera.

More if it occurs to me. Meanwhile enjoy, enjoy.

Never let it be said that the Wakemen don't know how to have a good time on a shoestring. Picture the scene:

A loud crash from upstairs was followed by a lot of cursing and clattering. A few minutes later, Mr W emerged in the kitchen, to announce that he had dropped his compartmentalised metal case of woodscrews on the floor and they were now all mixed up.

Never one to miss the chance of some free entertainment, I suggested we could spend the evening sorting them out - which we duly did. After supper, and armed with a glass of red wine each, we took a tray of ironmongery each and scuffled and scrabbled all evening while the usual soup of uncomprehending TV pap washed over us.

Sorting out the very big and very small ones was the easy bit, but then we were left with a muddle of middle-sized ones in several sizes and not enough bins to stash them in - a conundrum only solved when Mr W decided that there were different makes of the same size, which my unduly tidy mind had tried to sort into too many categories. So with a tiny twinge of uneasiness, I allowed him to amalgamate my carefully-sorted piles into fewer heaps, and they were then put to bed.

So, a whole evening spent in good clean family fun and not a penny spent!

I wonder if I shall wake in the middle of the night worrying that he will pick out what he thinks is a 3.5 x 25 but it's really a 4.0 x 20 - or is that the way that madness lies?

(after E J Thribb)

So, farewell then Woolworths,
Duck-egg blue and pillar-box red livery,
1950s chrome and glass frontages.
Broken biscuits by the pound, dried-up garden plants,
Dylon dyes and Ladybird children's clothes.
Buckets and spades in seaside resorts,
LPs and singles in city and town.
An Aladdin's cave of plastic wonders
seen from a child's eye height,
Prosaic curtain poles and paint for the grown-ups.
The place to go when you can't think
of where else would sell it.

So many memories over my lifetime.
All going or gone - how sad.

From our Washington correspondent:

Little-known political speech writer Bob "The" Builder was recruited by Senator Barack Obama to craft his eloquent speech, following Obama's victory in the US Presidential Elections last night.

This fact only emerged when it was realised that Bob's catchphrase '[Can we fix it] - yes we CAN!' had inadvertently been left in the final draft of the speech - not just once, but several times, in what may prove to be an embarrassing mistake that may come to haunt Mr Obama in the future.

- now compare and contrast:

Bob was later tracked down by our London correspondent in a pub in Chiswick, drowning his sorrows in Fuller's Best. He was reluctant to be interviewed about the gaffe, but did observe, in a somewhat incoherent way, that he hoped American elation wouldn't turn to ashes the way it has for the UK, many years on from Tony's triumphant election speech.

From our London desk, 16:00

In an unexpected spin-off of the Porsche-VW shenanigans, bands of angry traders are roaming the City ripping the badges from VW cars. Scouring executive car parks, they have done several thousand pounds worth of damage.

Wags have pointed out that they'd be better off trashing Porsches - but most of them drive their own, so don't want to foul their own nests.

Waking up and getting up in the mornings has never been easy for me, apart from on the odd occasion when the clock radio has done its job and something I hear in the news makes me so furious that I am propelled in a state of disbelieving fury from my moribund state.

It's normally politicians or religious twits that have this effect, but today, whilst the mental shutters always come down at the mention of sport and the Olympics in particular, something seeped through this morning. It was the idea that yet another over-funded under-brained sporting organisation is actually setting targets for UK medals in the games. That is just so risibly stupid on so many levels that I shan't even try to begin to expand my thought processes on this one. Count yourselves lucky. I'm beginning to sound like Marcus Brigstocke!

And on a note related to the previous post, Southern Electric keep sending us free energy saving lightbulbs, so they can't be all bad, although Southern Water have just sent us a bill from our neighbour's meter and it takes sending an operative from Siemens to ascertain that we're not entirely stupid and can read our own meter serial number accurately.

OK, rant over. But there'll be more, I just know there will.

Everyone enjoy their day now.

The government's measure of inflation seems not to apply to people like me who spend on essentials i.e. proper food made from ingredients, power and fuel. Not clothes, new cars, electronic gadgets, eating out etc.

To illustrate that: from an email last week from EDF Energy:

"Congratulations!
It has been two years since you signed up for the Read. Reduce. Reward Scheme and we are delighted to award you 1000 Nectar points for reducing your annual electricity usage from year one to year two. Your usage is recorded below.
Year 1 annual electricity usage - 015736 kWh
Year 2 annual electricity usage - 007198 kWh"

Yes - that is a 55% decrease - for which we have worked hard.

This morning, the end of year payment review arrived, telling us that our monthly budget plan payment has been changed (i.e increased) from £46 to £70 - a 52% increase.

I think I'll blow the Nectar points on long johns for us to wear in the winter... or perhaps candles to light us after dark.

"The fuel surcharge is £2.50 a leg per car, and 30p per leg for foot passengers".

Thus spake the MD of Wightlink on BBC's Working Lunch today, explaining how increased diesel costs were affecting his business. The web site requires you to know the price of Brent crude in order to see how much you will be paying - now there's a novelty.